Living in Rio

November 06, 2011

I stumbled across a fascinating anecdote in a book a few months ago about a gringa in Rio, and put it on my growing to do list of things to research. But someone at Globo must have come across the same story, because a twenty-minute interview was released this weekend with the very same person.

According to Eduardo Galeano, Peggy Dulany Rockefeller went to live in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1960s, moving in with a family in Jacarezinho, a favela in Zona Norte. As a recent high school graduate, she worked with local organizations in Rio favelas. At one point, Peggy's father came to visit and allegedly left a check for the host family, giving the family a boost akin to a winning lottery ticket. But there's not much information about why Peggy went or what kind of work she did there.

So between the interview below and a bit of research, I discovered that Peggy's time in Rio was essentially a defining moment for the rest of her life. She didn't use her father's name while in Rio, and worked with a group of sociologists, anthropologists, volunteers and community members in social development. She cites her experiences there as the inspiration for her career in social development and philanthropy. After living in Rio, she went to get her BA and doctorate at Harvard, and founded the Synergos Institute in 1986, an organization which aims to "facilitate relationships between grassroots leaders and political or business leaders, people who otherwise would not have access to each other, so that they can develop long-term relationships and forge new paths in overcoming poverty." She has also worked with the UN and the Ford Foundation on health care and family planning in Brazil and the US.

In the interview below, Peggy (or as she's now called, Dr. Dulany), discusses her love of Brazilian culture, the warmth and welcoming nature of the people she encountered, a bit about her time in Rio, her experience with social development, and her work with Synergos -- all in Portuguese, with a carioca accent. The Globo video production is not the best, but it's a very interesting interview worth watching.

October 18, 2011

You may know her as the American college student who writes for Piauí, the Brazilian equivalent of The New Yorker. Or you may know her as the gringa that caused an uproar at Rio's most expensive university with her blog post. Or you may not have heard of her yet, in which case I'm very happy to introduce the immensely talented Flora Thomson-Deveaux.

Flora is a junior at Princeton who is studying abroad in Rio de Janeiro, and is a like-minded gringa fluent in Spanish and Portuguese with a deep and abiding love of Brazil. She's admittedly obsessed with Brazilian music, specifically from the 1920s, which she is researching for school. She's one of those Very Smart People, and her accents in both Portuguese and Spanish are flawless. I spoke to her about how she ended up in Brazil and writing for Piauí, as well as her experiences living in the Cidade Maravilhosa.

Though Flora already spoke Spanish when she began college, she wanted to try something new. Portuguese was the "lazy" choice, she claims, since she found a Portuguese class for Spanish speakers. She began studying Portuguese her first semester at Princeton, but it was much harder than she thought, and she didn't like it much. But the second semester, she took a seminar on Brazilian cinema which she says was "completely infectious," and began to enjoy her Portuguese studies. At the time, there was an author at Princeton working on a Carmen Miranda biography, but she didn't speak Portuguese. After reaching out to the Portuguese department, no one was interested - that is, no one except for Flora. "I was delighted at the prospect," she told me, and despite only being in her second semester of Portuguese, began translating. She was told to do as much as she could, as fast as she could, getting paid an "embarrassingly low sum." It ended up being more an extracurricular activity, since the pay was so meager and she spent so much time on the project, sometimes staying up until 4 in the morning translating. In the end, she ended up translating not one but two Carmen Miranda biographies, including an entire biography written by the former director of the Carmen Miranda Museum, and part of Ruy Castro's Carmen biography. "It took me less than a month," Flora said, "but I basically didn't sleep."

Though she continued her Portuguese studies her sophomore year, Flora wasn't necessarily thinking about going to Brazil. She's headed to Argentina for spring semester abroad, since she loves Borges and had been looking forward to studying literature in Buenos Aires. But her interest in Brazil grew. She covered a Brazilian film festival during an internship as a radio journalist, and found herself trying to improve her Portuguese. She would sit at the Portuguese "table" every week at the Princeton dining hall, and listened to Brazilian music all the time. At Princeton, the Portuguese department emphasizes learning music as a part of learning the language, and Flora says she could sing in Portuguese before she could speak a sentence without stumbling through. She also loves Brazilian film, and devoured the Princeton library's Brazilian movie DVD collection before heading to Rio. During her last semester before studying abroad, she took three Portuguese seminars.

A large part of Flora's fascination with Brazil stemmed from her love of Carmen Miranda and Rio of the 1920s. "She's an acquired taste," Flora admits, and says even now that she finds a few of her songs to be "god-awful." But she's enamored of Carmen. "While translating someone's life from beginning to end, you lose all critical distance," Flora said. "It was total identification." In what she calls an odd, mostly emotional, and slightly incomprehensible relationship with Carmen, she felt like she bonded with her while translating her biography.

So for Flora, coming to Rio for the first time was a dream come true. In her blog, Flora relates part of a dream she had about Rio where she traveled around the city in a streetcar, and fell to her knees, weeping with joy. But Flora knew the city she had fallen in love with was very different from the one where she would be living. "I had this weird emotional attachment to a city that no longer existed," she said, "so I was prepared for pretty much anything." Most of what she knew about modern Rio was from movies, and she came expecting to discover a place that was completely new to her.

Flora arrived in Rio a month early to begin research for one of two of her junior papers, which are basically a practice run for her thesis next year. She has been doing research on popular Brazilian music of the 1920s at the Instituto Moreira Salles, the Biblioteca Nacional, and other institutions, and has recently begun writing her paper. In addition to going to class and studying, she also writes her blog, and occasionally stops in at the Piauí offices. She was excited by the recent talks on Fernando Pessoa and other cultural events throughout the city. Sometimes, she hunts down samba places in Lapa that play "the old stuff" from her favorite time period, or if there's nothing else to do, she'll head to the beach. Also, she started rowing on the lagoon after asking to try a few months ago, despite never having rowed before. Now she rows regularly at 7 in the morning, starting her day by soaking in the stunning views of the city. "I'm like a kid in a candy shop," she told me eagerly. "Rio seems inexhaustible."

Originally, Flora had no intentions of writing professionally while in Rio. She started a personal blog to keep in touch with family and friends at home, and to share her experiences. But one of her former professors at Princeton was reading the blog, and sent her an email telling her that other people would enjoy her writing. "I didn't think people would find it interesting," Flora admits. But her professor insisted it would be great, and asked if she'd like to publish it on a different site. That professor was João Moreira Salles, acclaimed documentary filmmaker and the founder of Piauí magazine. And so Flora began to write for Questões Estrangeiras on Piauí, writing in English with a mixture of Portuguese, as well as the introductory post in Portuguese.

Flora found it easy to adjust to Rio life. When I asked her about adapting to Brazilian culture, or things she found strange, Flora had trouble thinking of ideas. She did find it odd that Brazilians laugh at all kinds of movies, even documentaries or dramas, something she'd encountered in both Miami and Rio. She also was a bit taken aback by the lack of importance (or entire lack) of the family dinner, since growing up in a small town in Virginia, family dinner was sacrosanct. She says not much shocks her, although she was not at all prepared for how bad the Carmen Miranda Museum would be.

In a way though, she was surprised about how she is often viewed as an outsider, even though she feels very much at home. Though she expressed her desire to want to fit in, she lamented that "it's very depressing to think that I'll only ever be taken for a tourist." (In addition to having very pale skin, Flora has red hair, which is not very common in Rio). She avoids really touristy areas so that people won't automatically assume she's a foreigner, but sometimes she'll even get funny looks when speaking Portuguese. People have told her: "tem cara de gringa." (You look like a foreigner) But despite her looks, Flora feels like a native. "As soon as I started to get to know Brazil, I felt as if it was something I already knew...it always felt like a part of me." While writing critically about Brazil on her blog, she later realized she felt she had the imperative because she doesn't feel like an outsider. "I felt Brazilian," she said. "I don't feel like an outsider."

You can tell by talking to Flora of her abiding love for Brazil, and especially Rio. Before moving to the city, she asked around if she would be able to live there without rooting for a local soccer team. She was adamantly told she had to pick a team, and was lobbied by various torcedores. She originally analyzed the teams based on the team preferences of famous authors, but in the end decided on Botafogo. She loves Sérgio Augusto's book Entre o céu e o inferno about the history of the team, which she describes as both heroic and tragic. She rattled off some statistics and anecdotes about the team, and continually referred to the team not as they but as "we." Her first Rio soccer game was a Botafogo game, which they won, but she says she would have decided to root for them anyway. “It's glory and suffering, and you have to embrace both sides.”

While Flora's semester in Rio has been wonderful for Flora, her family did have misgivings about her decision, even though Flora has never felt afraid about living in the city. Her mom watched Notícias de uma guerra particular with her, though Flora tried to convince her that it was already outdated. But her mom was unnerved, says Flora. At a pre-departure meeting at Princeton, a student who had studied abroad in Brazil came to talk about her experience and "warn" her fellow students. "When Brazilians find out you're American, you can practically see dollar signs in their eyes," the girl told them, according to Flora. The girl also told the students to watch movies like Bus 174 and City of God to prepare themselves, and other advice that Flora found "ridiculous, xenophobic nonsense." Flora walked out in the middle of the orientation.

Flora hopes to return to Brazil as soon as she can after finishing her next semester in Argentina. "I'd do pretty much anything humanly possible to move to Rio," she confessed, though she joked not to tell her family, since her grandmother had asked her not to move to Brazil. But it's too late. "I've fallen in love with Rio," Flora said. "It's hopeless."

October 07, 2011

I'm always surprised by how much Rio changes every time I go back, and this time was no exception. The sense of optimism is literally palpable. Driving into the city, the roads seem better, and the city almost feels calmer. Despite the controversy surrounding Eduardo Paes' shock order to expel mobile vendors from the beaches (I didn't see a single food cart vendor on the calçadão in Ipanema, a strange absence), Ipanema does seem a bit more orderly, though missing some of the traditional local color. From the airport, if you're paying attention, you'll notice a wall built to hide the favelas, perhaps adding to a the lessened sense of chaos (the city claims the walls are there to prevent noise and pollution within the favelas, but the favelas just north of the airport, outside of the normal tourist trajectory, do not have walls. Another post for another day). The port is overflowing with activity, and when we drove across the Ponte Niterói one morning at 6AM, there were literally dozens of ships anchored in the bay, testament to Brazil and Rio's continued economic boom.

Though the economy is supposedly cooling, you wouldn't know it from Rio. There's the obvious trend of increased international travel, with returning Cariocas at the airport, bringing three or four suitcases per person loaded with purchases from abroad. I saw several malls under construction, and they cross the economic spectrum - several going up in Zona Oeste and Zona Norte for the C and D classes, and a high-end mall being built in Barra for the very wealthy. Though construction cranes were the norm even when I lived in Rio, they're still ubiquitious throughout the city. Huge SUVs from American and Asian auto makers share the roadways with the conventional compact cars (including my father-in-law, now the proud owner of a Ford pickup). Seemingly all of the people in their 20s I spoke to are in school, be it undergrad, a second BA degree, or a masters program. Some people who previously had limited access to consumer goods now have multiple credit cards and are buying expensive digital cameras, video game consoles, smartphones, and flat screen TVs. Everyone seems confident about the future, a considerable contrast to here in the U.S.

On the other hand, the incredible feeding frenzy that is the consumer boom is worrisome, particularly with the C Class and newer consumers. I noticed small mom and pop stores in working class neighborhoods offering customers the option to use nearly every credit card available for purchases. At the malls, you can still buy nearly anything in installments, but some larger chains are offering credit lines as well. Ads for getting credit are everywhere - buy a newspaper or a weekly magazine and you'll find multiple full page ads from different banks for a variety of types of credit. Here's a magazine ad for CAIXA credit, the government-run bank that offers credit to consumers newer to banking. (Apparently, a pineapple is part of the Brazilian dream?)

In fact, while flipping through the Sunday edition of a New York Post-like daily, I found a newspaper almost entirely devoted to ads, with the front cover devoted not to a news headline, but to teaching readers how to plan a vacation and buy airfare (underneath the large ad for sports watches):

I recently re-read Open Veins of Latin America, and I couldn't help but wonder how sustainable this boom will be, or how much of the profits will stay in Brazil or benefit Brazilians in the long term. (Or, like in the US, if Brazilian corporations will take advantage of consumers). At one of the smaller stadiums in Rio state hosting the Brazilian Championship, Bridgestone, Gilette, and Remax ads adorned the sidelines, some of which are brands that aren't even new to Brazil. While Brazilian companies and corporations have flourished, there's still a large number of American, European, and Asian multinationals with their talons sunk firmly in the market.

While the economic boom is inescapable and Rio is quickly becoming more of a modern city, there are still vestiges of the past. In the suburbs like Zona Oeste and in smaller towns on the coast, horse-drawn carts share lanes with cars. While driving to Minas Gerais in rural Rio state, we passed a massive Nestlé factory under construction, next to rolling fields where a lone horseman rode next to a passing cargo train. Transportation infrastructure is still woefully inadequate, and with more people buying cars, traffic is getting worse. One morning, we got stuck in traffic on one of the city's major highways - at 5AM. (In related news, a study came out last week claiming Rio has the worst air pollution in the entire country.) There are more car dealerships popping up, and car offers even in the middle of malls. Here's a man feather-dusting a car in the middle of a mall in a working-class neighborhood. You can't see it, but there's an open bible on the dashboard.

Seeing Rio transformed is always exciting, but it makes me want to hold my breath. In some parts of the city, if you look up, you'll see vultures circling. I can't shake the image from my head, and worry that there are different birds of prey in the economy (and even politics). Maybe it's a symptom from re-reading Open Veins, but it's something unsettling I've observed from afar for quite awhile now.

September 08, 2011

The tech scene in Brazil is one of the most exciting in the world, and one of the best and brightest new Brazil tech writers is Anna Heim, a French expat and polygot who covers Latin America for The Next Web. She writes about countries throughout the region with a focus on Brazil, and has written about everything from e-commerce and smartphones to Orkut and lanhouses, as well as following some of Brazil's fastest-growing startups. I caught up with her recently to find out more about her interest in Brazil and technology, and about life as a gringa in Rio.

So you're French and work at a Video On Demand site. You've also lived all over the world. What brought you to Brazil? And how did you become interested in web technology?

It's true I used to work at a video on demand website in London, but that was before I came back to Brazil for a few months in March this year (I left two weeks ago). I'm saying 'coming back', because I've lived in São Paulo and Rio for 18 months in 2006-2007.

My initial connection with Brazil is through film: I'm a fan of Latin American cinema in general, and Brazilian movies in particular. I did an internship in Brazil after my Film & Business degree and ended up staying for one more year, working at Rio Film Festival first, and then at an indie film distribution company, where I was selling Brazilian short and feature films to foreign distributors and broadcasters.As for my connection with web/tech, it was mostly a hobby until recently; I spend a lot of time online (especially on Twitter) and I love to follow breaking news and trends. This is how I connected with Blue Bus, which is a Brazilian niche media (it's read mostly by advertisers and creatives). I wrote for Blue Bus from March to June, and started writing for The Next Web in May about the Latin American web/tech scenes, with a particular focus on startups. (I was already somewhat familiar with the startup culture as the company I was working for in London was one.)

What do you like most about living in Rio?

Unfortunately I'm not there at the moment, although I've lived there for one year and a half in total. As I'm sure you know, living there is like living in a postcard. It may sound like a cliché but the scenery is one of the things I enjoy the most: walking along the beach, seeing the morros in the background... I'm writing this and already feeling 'saudade'! I also enjoy the Carioca culture and how relaxed, friendly and informal it is. Although I like my gym, the city isn't as superficial as some think. I have a few close friends, the cultural life is quite vibrant, there are many French and foreign films at the local theaters, and from a tech/startup perspective there are some very interesting companies in Rio.

You really are quite the polygot (since you speak French, English, Spanish and Portuguese). How did you become fluent in Portuguese?

Thanks! I studied Portugal's Portuguese in Paris at Instituto Camoes for a few months but I only started speaking when I arrived in Brazil. Being fluent in Spanish helped me a lot (but my Spanish isn't that good anymore...)

You write for TNW, a tech site, about a number of topics but also about Brazil and Latin America. How long have you written for them (looks like maybe just a few months?) and why do you enjoy it?

I've been writing for The Next Web since May and I'm enjoying it very much. Besides the fact that I love to write about stuff I'm interested in, I also get a chance to connect with movers and shakers in the LatAm tech space. I'm very grateful for all the help I've received in connecting with the right people for my articles. I've found the local startup communities to be very supportive and it's a great opportunity to let people know about what's going on in the region, which is getting a lot of momentum.

You also write a blog on Le Monde about Brazil, in French. What topics are most important to you to convey to a French audience?

I do have a personal blog on Le Monde, where I write from time to time about culture, film, media, life in Rio, the connections between France and Brazil and the image of Brazil abroad. To be honest, I mostly write about what I am interested in and I don't really think about my audience :)

What do you think is the biggest misconception that foreigners have about technology or internet in Brazil?

I'm not sure there are any misconceptions, but probably a lack of knowledge of the local ecosystem and its specificities. Foreigners still have a limited knowledge of all that's going on, although investors and foreign companies are showing a growing interest in Brazil. I hope that my articles will help spreading the info about the local tech/web scene.

What do you think is one of the most interesting internet or tech trend in Brazil, and why?

Social interaction is very important in Brazil, and social media has been very successful in the country. Along the same line, I think crowdsourcing (the power of the crowds) could do very well. It could have a big impact on many areas, from film to design and politics, and even change the way we work. I've written a post about it a couple weeks ago, called Beyond the Buzzword: How Crowdsourcing Can Disrupt Brazil.

August 21, 2011

I came across Rio Radar by way of Rio Real Blog, and quickly discovered that I had a lot in common the writer, editor and translator behind it. A graduate of George Washington's Elliott School, Andrew Fishman speaks Portuguese and Spanish, studied abroad in Latin America and moved to Rio de Janeiro after graduating. In fact, he's in Rio on the very same fellowship that nearly brought me there (instead, I ended up doing the same project, but without funding). His project is his blog, Rio Radar, which is a mixture of media coverage and unique content. He provides English translations of news articles about public security, crime, drug trafficking, militias, and favela pacification in Rio, and also shoots videos of excellent interviews about these subjects with people on the ground, with English subtitles. He also keeps the blog layout simple with easy navigation, so it's easy to find what you're looking for. I spoke to Andrew about the blog, his interest in Brazil, and his views on public security in Rio.

How did you become interested in Brazil, and how did you become fluent in Portuguese?I came to Brazil by something of a coincidence. I was looking for study abroad programs in Latin America and found that GW was offering a $4,000 scholarship through the US Dept of Ed to study at UFSC in Florianópolis or the Federal University in Curitiba. There was almost no support structure and a lot of challenges—principally learning a new language in two months—and that’s what most appealed to me. Nobody else applied. I mean, you'd have to be a sucker to turn down $4,000 to live in an island paradise like Floripa.

I studied Spanish since I was a kid, but was never that dedicated. Classes started in August and I got there in June. I moved into a house with seven Brazilian guys, memorized 25 flashcards a day, did some online lessons, spent hours every day watching Two and a Half Men, Friends, and The Simpsons with Portuguese subtitles (something I would never do back home), and spent a lot of time with two very patient friends who helped me out a lot! I also watched the same Brazilian movies over and over again with English subs, then Portuguese, then without. MSN messenger with people I met was also helpful. Way more coffee than I was used to drinking…and a beer or two never hurts either in the beginning.

What was your major and area of interest at GW?I studied International Affairs with a concentration in International Development at the Elliott School. I lived in Ghana for a while before going to college, but started moving towards Latin America over time. Some of my favorite and most influential classes were National Security Decision Making with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the Anthropology of Development with Steve Lubkemann and Jose Muñoz, Arts and Culture with Leslie Jacobson, History of Latin America with Peter Klaren, and US Diplomatic History after WWII with Chris Tudda. I wrote my senior honors thesis on the geopolitics of US foreign policy in Colombia and the pending military base deal that Obama was pushing through that eventually fell apart under regional pressure. I also worked for the Institute of Brazilian Issues/Center for Latin American Issues with former acting US Ambassador to Brazil, Jim Ferrer, which was a great way to prep for my fellowship.

What inspired your fellowship project?I was sitting in one of my less engaging classes at UFSC one day and decided that I had to find a way to get back to Brazil, and preferably on somebody else’s dime. Brazil had won their World Cup bid and Rio had just won their Olympics bid the week before. The UPP program had just taken off and was receiving a lot of positive international press; Paes, Cabral, and Lula were all working in harmony and talking about huge infrastructure investments; and the pre-salt oil fields had just been discovered off of Rio’s coast and were being talked about as the biggest find in the past thirty years—I realized that Rio was going to be the hot spot for the coming years. Studying a new security policy, based on successes in Colombia, that seemed to be entirely structured around the 2014 and 2016 mega-events, but done in a way that was supposed to be very different from what happened in the 2007 Pan-American Games, really interested me. So I started talking to a lot of professors, past Fulbrighters, and anyone else I could find about how I could do this project and what I could reasonably achieve. I figured applying for the Shapiro fellowship would be good training for the Fulbright and then I could modify my (failed) proposal to get that, but I ended up getting lucky the first time around.

What are your goals for your blog? Do you plan to continue it after your fellowship ends?The proposal was originally to write a research paper, but I realized that, even if I could get it published, aside from my mom, few people would read it. Once I got here I suggested a multimedia blog centered around subtitled video interviews. When I am interested in a new subject, the first thing I usually do is try to get my hands on as many documentaries and YouTube videos as I can because it is a quick and easy way of getting a feel for the basics.

Rio Radar is essentially designed to target someone like me three years ago—a non-Portuguese speaker who probably has never been to Brazil but wants to hear the view from the ground straight from the mouths of people directly involved in the process. I try to keep the videos short and sweet but all of my interviewees have just had way too many interesting things to say.

I tried to come into it as neutral as possible—to be an interlocutor and represent the views of people who understand the situation better than I do. When I head back to the States I will write up and post my own analysis. I don’t know if the blog will continue when I go back, but I would like to keep it going.

After the fellowship, what do you hope to do?After the money runs out, I will move back to Washington DC and jump into the job hunt. I have spent so much time and energy getting into Brazilian issues that it would be a shame to start working in a totally unrelated field. That being said, a Brazilian friend from college and I are working on putting together a new online project related to Brazilian issues. More on that later…

What do you think is the least complicated public security issue to tackle in Rio? The most difficult?The easiest problem to solve (theoretically, of course) is to remove the primary profit source of criminal gangs in Brazil (and thereby simultaneously increase border security) by legalizing narcotics…good luck getting reelected. However, one thing you can see with the rise of militias is that a culture of informality and corruption allows criminal syndicates make large profits without drug sales. There is no drug dealing in Rio das Pedras, but militias are making serious profits there through monopolies on gato telecom and gas sales, taking a cut on real estate sales and irregular transport, and straight out extortion. The culture of corruption and impunity is the most intractable problem in Brazil—it has existed since the country’s founding, whereas armed drug trafficking is a relatively new phenomenon. While the Police Pacification Units (UPPs) may be dealing a blow to drug dealers—on a limited scale—they are incapable of combating corrupt politicians, militias, death squads, a 92% rate of unsolved homicides…in June of this year, just June, the police were officially responsible for 63 murders in greater Rio. One way of dealing with this—and this is not a universal truism by any means—is greater pay, better training, and a renewed institutional culture. Professionals who are better paid, better trained, and more respected are more likely to think twice before making that poor decision, be it pulling a trigger, taking a bribe, abusing their position, etc.

This applies to civilians as well. Security Secretary Beltrame talks about this, but little is being done about it—but it’s a hard area to tackle: creating legal, well-paying, viable alternatives for potential criminals. The only way to do that in the short term is basically a direct government stimulus plan, and that is unsustainable. It’s a long-term process that starts with education and ends with the private sector, preferably with some government incentives.

What's your take on the murder of Judge Acioli? Do you think it will create more pressure to reduce impunity for the militia? This story immediately made international news. Killing a respected and controversial judge is a big deal, even in Rio de Janeiro. This is the first killing of a major public figure obviously perpetrated by a militia in Rio to my knowledge. On Monday three judges came together to take over her seat at the head of the 4th Criminal Court of São Gonçalo, but is this going to change anything? I don’t think so. Professionals and regular citizens have already feared these groups—from what I can see, more so than drug gangs. Now that there are three judges fulfilling her role, perhaps they can be three times as effective, but they probably won’t stick their necks out as much. Plus, as Judge Acioli mentioned in the final interview before her murder, the court has a backlog of 7,000 killings by police officers in São Gonçalo alone; what can one judge (or three, for that matter) realistically do about it?

In terms of public security, how do you think Rio will fare in 2014 and 2016?Even the most critical voices that I have interviewed seem to readily believe that the 2014 and 2016 games will go off without a hitch security-wise and they will be wonderful exhibitions of the best side of Rio. The federal, state, and municipal governments are pouring some serious money into expanding the police forces, creating a “security belt” in the areas that most tourists will frequent, upgrading technology and equipment, and so on. The military will probably provide some level of tactical assistance and, as it was during the 2007 Pan-American Games, police presence on the streets will be through the roof.

The question that people are worried about is, “what about 2017?” With so much investment in infrastructure and security and construction being games-focused, how much of this will serve to benefit the people of Rio after the last medal is awarded? And like all things in this world, it will probably be a mixed bag. Hopefully Rio will end up being a safer city, with a better equipped, better trained police force, with a more cohesive transportation infrastructure, but billions of the reais invested will be pocketed or pilfered and little of this investment will serve the communities further removed from the city center and zona sul that are most in need and that tourists never see.

That said, these concerns are not unique to Rio or Brazil and I really do believe there is forward momentum here. It’s just that things move slower than people would like. Always. And when your governor makes huge promises and then raises the advertising budget of the state by 40% while his new police recruits are undertrained, people who are paying attention reasonably tend to get a bit cynical.

July 06, 2011

Last week, the Brazilian government statistics agency, IBGE, announced findings from the 2010 census, showing demographic shifts in neighborhoods of cities throughout the country. In Rio de Janeiro, the trends were clear: with skyrocketing real estate prices, particularly in the Zona Sul and traditionally wealthy neighborhoods, as well as limited space downtown, more and more people are moving to the Zona Oeste, including both the nouveau riche areas of Barra and Recreio as well as the working class suburbs of Jacarepaguá and Campo Grande.

Housing prices in Rio are on the rise, especially in the Zona Sul; in Leblon, for example, apartment prices have quadrupled in the past year. So with more space and lower prices, more people have been flocking to the Zona Oeste, and its population rose 150 percent in 10 years with 278,000 new inhabitants. Campo Grande is actually now the largest neighborhood in the city with nearly 330,000 inhabitants, and ten of the city's largest neighborhoods are now in the Zona Oeste, including Bangu, Santa Cruz, Realengo, Jacarepaguá, Barra da Tijuca, and Guaratiba. Recreio's population increased 110 percent in 10 years, and other neighborhoods nearby grew above 100 percent as well. Though the population increased, experts have noted that infrastructure, public transportation, and sanitation have not kept up with the pace of new inhabitants.

Graphic: Estadão(click the image or link and roll over map for neighborhood names and stats)

Meanwhile, in the same period, the Zona Sul's population decreased. The neighborhoods with the largest decreases were Humaita (-12.5 percent), Ipanema (-8.7 percent), Gávea (-8.4 percent), Jardim Botânico (-7.9 percent), and Flamengo (-6 percent), and Laranjeiras, Leblon, and Copacabana also saw decreases. Just a few Zona Sul neighborhoods grew in the past ten years including Lagoa, Catete, and Botafogo. Plus, Copacabana is now the neighborhood with the highest concentration of senior citizens in the entire country.

Despite a rise in salaries, a reduction in unemployment, and the expansion of the middle class, some of the city's favelas grew at a higher average rate than the rest of the city. Rocinha grew the most -- 23 percent in the last decade -- and now has an estimated 69,300 inhabitants. Maré, considered a neighborhood, grew 14 percent, and now has 129,700 inhabitants, and the Complexo do Alemão favela grew 6.3 percent, and now has nearly 70,000 inhabitants. (Interestingly, Cidade de Deus, one of the largest favelas in the high-growth area of Zona Oeste, saw a population decline of 4 percent). But another sign of development did show in favela populations: fertility rates are decreasing. Another new, but more limited phenomenon in the favelas in the Zona Oeste are all out destruction: as the city makes way for World Cup and Olympics venues, a few favelas are being razed to the ground.

For more interactive census information, check out the sectors map from IBGE. You can see demographic changes by neighborhood all over Brazil (mainly by age and gender).

June 12, 2011

There are quite a few blogs about life in Rio de Janeiro, but you'll be hard-pressed to find one that is dedicated nearly in its entirety to celebrating the city, and you'll find few bloggers as passionate about his city as Quintino Gomes. Diário do Rio has become a very successful blog that details all there is to know about the exciting things going on in Rio de Janeiro, from new movies being filmed to cultural events to new architecture projects. It's the place to go to not only find interesting news, but also learn about Rio's history, culture, and sports. Quintino and I have been collaborating for quite some time, since we have a bit of overlap, and the blog is one of my favorites to keep in touch with everything that's going on in the Cidade Maravilhosa. So I thought I'd chat with him and find out more about the blog and his mission. The original interview is below in Portuguese, and this is my translation.

Q&A With Quintino Gomes

How did you come up with the idea for Diário do Rio? When did you start the blog?

One day, I mentioned to a friend that there weren't any blogs about Rio, except for blogs just for events, and he said, why don't you start one? Plus, at the time the Pan American Games were coming up, and people only criticized the city, saying it wouldn't be able to hold the games and that it would be a disaster. And right before the Pan Games began, they started calling it the Pan of Brazil, as if the city wasn't the one investing in holding the event. So on January 1st, 2007, right after New Year's, I went and started the Diário do Rio.

Do you have a job besides blogging, or do you make a living from the blog?

I still work, right now with social media, but I'd love to be able to make a living just from the blog. But unfortunately I can't.

How big is your readership?

There are around 300,000 pageviews per month, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. On Facebook, there are nearly 22,000 fans, with a good level of engagement. On Twitter, there are only 2,435 followers.

The focus of the blog is on the good things about Rio, like culture, history, sports, etc. Why is that important?

Self-esteem. Cariocas live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but four years ago the media didn't help. When you read the news about Rio, you'd only see violence, violence, and more violence. What about the positive news about the city? Today, it's fashionable to say that now it's "Rio's Turning Point," or "Rio's Defining Moment" but that's a lie - Rio always had tons of good things to do, and you only needed the willingness to be able to see that.

Someone recently told my husband about the so-called Dry Law crossers, people who are paid to drive through police checkpoints after the drivers have been drinking. Have you heard about that?

Never, but it's possible they exist. There's just one problem - certainly, the Dry Law enforcers are going to find it odd that the same person is going through the checkpoint three or four times in a different car. It's risky.

The governor from the PMDB party, Sérgio Cabral, lives in another world. He treats civil servants badly, since he considers them an expense and not an investment. Earning R$950 a month is already a miserable wage, and even more so when you take into consideration that they're risking their own lives. The invasion of the firefighters headquarters was an act of desperation after months of trying to reach an agreement. Using BOPE, who are well respected by Cariocas, to attack the firefighters was a PR attempt that went incredibly wrong. It awakened society to the firefighters' situation and it began to repeat itself here in Rio with a movement similar to the Spanish "Indignados." Some Cariocas put red ribbons on their cars, and I made a point of changing the Diário do Rio logo during that time. Now the Rio state teachers are on strike, and they earn R$750 a month. It could be a snowball effect, which I hope it is.

What's your opinion about the Olympics and the World Cup?

The Olympics were extremely important for Cariocas, since it was like an endorsement that the world gave to the city, validating its ability to hold events, to be a global city, and having to compete with cities like Chicago, Tokyo, and Madrid. The Olympic Games will enable the city to be the capital of the world for several months (not just the period of the actual games). And we can take advantage of that to show all that is beautiful [in the city] and our own capabilities. As for the World Cup, I have some misgivings, especially about the use of Maracanã Stadium, a project with a budget around US$1 billion, that shouldn't be done. Instead of renovating the stadium, as iconic as it may be, they could have demolished it and built a new one, like they did with Wimbledon or expanding the capacity of Engenhão Stadium.

What do you think is the best place in Rio? What's the best thing about Rio?

It's hard to pick just one place. I love Lagoa (the lagoon), but I also love driving down Joá and Niemeyer. There are few cities in the world where you have such a beautiful view when you're stopped in a traffic jam. There's Santa Teresa, that has a bohemian air, or suburbs like Oswaldo Cruz and Madureira that have that 60s feel when you could sit in a chair outside your house and chat with your neighbors. Without a doubt, the best thing about Cariocas are their idiosyncracies, their accents, and their optimism.